Study on damping control for vibration isolation and

its application
Minqing Wang, Qiaojiao Li, Fei Han, Xiao Wang, Haohao Zhang
School of Marine Science and Technology
Northwestern Polytechnical University
Xi'an, China
mqwang@nwpu.edu.cn

Abstract—The damping of vibration isolator plays a power requirements, complexity and instability. There are also
significant role in the progress of vibration isolation design. The some pure mechanical structures that have been presented to
appropriate damping will significantly suppress the resonance achieve damping adjustability [6-7]. The damping force of
response of the system at the resonant frequency, while the these variable damping isolation systems can vary with the
existence of damping will increase the vibration transmissibility amplitude of the systems, or be artificially tuned at will [8-9].
in the vibration isolation working area. Therefore, it could meet However, the damping force cannot be adjusted automatically
both the requirement of vibration isolation and amplitude and flexibly as the disturbing frequency changes, which makes
control in the resonance region when the damping of the system it hard to improve the performance of the vibration isolation
could be controlled with the change of frequency. In this paper a
systems greatly.
new type of controllable damping isolator is presented, i.e. the
damping will be as large as possible in order to suppress the In this paper, a new design of damping adjustable isolator is
vibration near the resonance region when the disturbance proposed. The damping of isolation systems varies with the
frequency is below 2 times of isolator natural frequency, and disturbing frequency, and an optimum comprehensive effect
as small as possible in order to obtain a better isolation effect can be achieved over the whole frequency range.
when the frequency is over 2 times of isolator natural
frequency. An increment of 5dB could be obtained in the II. THEORY OF VARIABLE DAMPING VIBRATION
vibration isolation while the resonance is restrained effectively by ISOLATION
adopting this designing technology. There are many parameters that can be used to describe and
evaluate the performance of the isolation systems, and the most
Keywords—isolator; damping control; resonance; vibration
common one is the vibration transmissibility T , which can be
transmissibility
defined as[2]
I. INTRODUCTION amplitude of transmitted force
T (1)
Vibration isolation is one of the most common and amplitude of disturbing force
effective methods for vibration control, which are used to
prevent transmission of vibration from vibration excitation Or
source [1-2]. Although the technology of vibration isolation amplitude of transmitted displacement
has become more and more mature, it also has many problems T (2)
that needs resolution, one of which is the compromise between amplitude of disturbing displacement
large damping for suppressing resonance and small damping
for better vibration isolation effect. The appropriate damping F  t   F0 e jt
will significantly suppress the resonance response of the
system at the resonant frequency, but the existence of damping x t  m
will also increase the vibration transmissibility in the vibration
isolation working area. To resolve this contradiction, a series of k c
damping adjustable vibration isolators have been presented.
One way to improve the isolation performance is to take P t 
advantage of active or semi-active vibration isolation systems,
Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of one-degree-of-freedom vibration isolation
which usually make use of electro-rheological or magneto- system with damping
rheological fluids [3-5]. Attempts to improve the performance
of the vibration isolation systems by using a variable damping For a one-degree-of-freedom vibration isolation system
component based on electro-rheological or magneto- (see Figure 1), the equation of motion is given by
rheological fluids have been made by many researchers. But
these active or semi-active vibration isolation systems are less mx  cx  kx  F0 e jt (3)
commonly used than passive isolation systems due to their
Where
This work is supported by the Key Laboratory of Hydroacoustic Electronic
Warfare Technology.
978-1-4673-9073-6/17/$31.00 ©2017 IEEE
Proceedings of 2017 14th International Bhurban Conference on Applied Sciences & Technology (IBCAST) 661
Islamabad, Pakistan, 10th – 14th January, 2017
 F0 transmissibility. So it is advantageous to increase the damping
x (t )  2
e j t (4) of the isolation systems, especially if resonance occurs.
k  m  j c
The force transmitted to the foundation is When z  2 , the vibration transmissibility is less than 1
and decreases continuously with the increase of the frequency
k  j c ratio. In this vibration isolation working area, where f  2 f 0 ,
P  cx  kx  F0 e jt (5)
k  m 2  j c the smaller the damping ratio, the larger the vibration
transmissibility, which indicates that small damping isolation
Then the vibration transmissibility is given by systems are more favorable for better vibration isolation
effects.
P k 2   2c2
T  (6) The vibration frequency of rotating machines, such as
F0 (k  m 2 ) 2   2 c 2 motor, will change constantly during starts and stops, resulting
in the equality between the disturbing frequency of rotating
As the critical damping coefficient can be given
machines and the natural frequency of isolator at some point,
as c  2 mk  2m0 , and the damping ratio can be given
C and then resonance occurs. At this time, a suitable damping of
by   c C c , then the idealized transmissibility T of the the isolation systems is needed to suppress resonance, while
isolation systems would become the damping of the isolation systems is expected to be as small
as possible in isolation working area. Obviously that is a total
1  (2 z ) 2 contradiction for usual isolator.
T (7)
(1  z 2 ) 2  (2 z ) 2 The damping adjustable vibration isolators should be one of
the right solutions. The damping of the isolator is set to be as
Where z is the frequency ratio, which can be computed by large as possible when the disturbance frequency is
the ratio between disturbing frequency f and the isolator below 2 times of isolator natural frequency, and as small as
natural frequency f 0 , i.e. possible when the frequency is over 2 times of isolator
natural frequency (see Figure 3). Then a better vibration
z  f f0 (8)
isolation effect can be achieved at full frequency.
The graph below shows a plot of this idealized
transmissibility as a function of frequency. Frequency detection

1
10
ζ=0 Yes No
ζ=0.1
Vibration Transmissibility T

ζ=0.2
0 ζ=0.5
10 Large damping Small damping
ζ=1
ζ=1
Fig. 3. The damping adjust strategy
ζ=0.5
-1
10 ζ=0.2
III. A NUMERICAL EXAMPLE
ζ=0.1
1
10
-2
ζ=0 Unadjustable
10 -1 0 1 Adjustable
Vibration TransmissibilityT

10 10 10
Frequency Ratio z
0
10
Fig. 2. The vibration transmissibility of isolation systems

The influence of damping ratio on vibration

transmissibility can be divided into two phases according to -1
10
different values of z (see Figure 2), which are:
z  2 and z  2 .

When z  2 , the vibration transmissibility remains above -2

10 -1 0 1
1, and reaches a maximum at z  1 as resonance occurs, which 10 10 10
means the isolation systems are useless or even Frequency Ratio z

counterproductive. In this region that f  2 f 0 , as shown in Fig. 4. The vibration transmissibility of the usual isolator (dashed line) and
the damping adjustable vibration isolator (solid line).
Figure 2, the larger the damping ratio, the smaller the vibration
Assuming that the damping ratio of a usual isolator is

Proceedings of 2017 14th International Bhurban Conference on Applied Sciences & Technology (IBCAST) 662
Islamabad, Pakistan, 10th – 14th January, 2017
0.065, then its vibration transmissibility curve can be obtained,
as shown in Figure 4 (the dashed line). For damping adjustable
vibration isolator, the damping ratio is adjusted to 0.25
when f  2 f 0 , and 0.01 when f  2 f 0 , which can also be
seen in Figure 4 (the solid line).
The vibration isolation effect of isolation systems is usually
quantitatively evaluated in dB, which can be derived as
1 operating frequency of the engine is larger.
GL  20lg (3)
T This result is only one example typical of the damping
Where T is the vibration transmissibility.
Then the vibration isolation effectiveness curve for those
two types of isolator in dB can be seen in Figure 5.
60
Vibration Isolation Effectiveness (dB)
An improvement of more than 10 dB can be achieved at
resonance point by the damping adjustable vibration isolator
(see Figure 6). Assuming that an engine rotates at 3, 000
revolutions per minute, which means it operates at a frequency
of 50 Hz, and that the isolation system has a natural frequency
of 4Hz. Then the frequency ratio becomes 12.5 according to
the formula (2), and an increment of about 5dB can be easily
read from the graph above, which could be even higher if the
adjustable vibration isolator. And better performance can be
obtained if the parameters of isolation systems become more
optimal, such as a smaller damping in isolation working area.
For practical applications, the damping adjustability can be

Unadjustable
Adjustable
40
20
0 like vehicles, underwater equipment, bridges, and so on.
-20
0 5 10
Frequency Ratio z
Fig. 5. The vibration isolation effectiveness of the usual isolator (dashed
line) and the damping adjustable vibration isolator (solid line).
As is shown in the graph above, a significant improvement
can be achieved in the region of resonance using that damping
adjustable vibration isolator, and the vibration isolation
increment grows with the increase of frequency in isolation
working area, which indicate that the performance of the
damping adjustable vibration isolation systems is superior to
that of the usual isolation systems over the whole frequency
range. In order to evaluate the improvement more intuitively,
the difference curve between the damping adjustable vibration
isolator and the usual isolator has been obtained, as shown in
Figure 6.
12
10
Isolation Increment (dB)
implemented in several ways. For example, dry friction
damping is an effective and simple measure for damping
adjustable vibration isolation, which can be adjusted by
changing the contact pressure or area. The oil damper is
another choice, which can be adjusted by changing the orifice
area. It can be expected that this damping adjustable
installation will be widely used in many occasions where the
vibration isolating system with good performance is needed,
IV. CONCLUSION
In this paper, a new design of damping adjustable isolator is
15 20 25 30
presented, which can work better over the whole frequency
band with the changing disturbing frequency. The result of a
numerical example indicate that, with the damping adjustable
isolator, an improvement of more than 10 dB can be achieved
at resonance point and an increment of about 5dB can be
obtained at operating frequency, compared with a usual
isolator. And if the damping of the isolation system could be
set to smaller, the result would be better.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
This work is supported by the Key Laboratory of
Hydroacoustic Electronic Warfare Technology.
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Proceedings of 2017 14th International Bhurban Conference on Applied Sciences & Technology (IBCAST) 663
Islamabad, Pakistan, 10th – 14th January, 2017
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Proceedings of 2017 14th International Bhurban Conference on Applied Sciences & Technology (IBCAST) 664
Islamabad, Pakistan, 10th – 14th January, 2017